Roman Nostrums.--How old are all these methods, and how little human nature has changed through all the centuries! The patent medicine men of Rome in the early Christian eras made use of just the same methods that are employed to-day. Friedlaender, in his "Roman Life and Manners Under the Early Roman Empire," tells the story well. Many remedies were known by special arbitrary names, instead of descriptive names recalling the ingredients. Sometimes they were named after famous physicians who had used them, or were said to have done so; again, the preparations were named after persons of distinction who actually, or supposedly, were cured thereby, much as, in our own day, cigars are named after poets, statesmen and pugilists. The titles of some of these preparations, for instance, were "Ointment for Gout, Made for Patroculus, Imperial Freedman--Safe Cure"; "Ointment for {59} Aburnius Valens" (probably the famous jurist) called the "Expensive Ointment"; "Eye Salve with Which Florus Cured Antonia, the Wife of Drusus (the Emperor's son) After the Other Doctors had Nearly Blinded Her." Many of these remedies were labeled "instantaneous," "safe," "sure cure," "Harmless remedy," and the like. Frequently euphonious names, sometimes from the Greek, were chosen: Ambrosia, Anicetum, Nectarium, for the promoters evidently knew the satisfying effect, on both patient and physician, of a mystifying foreign name. _Proprietary Remedies_.--A corresponding abuse very like that of our own time was with reference to proprietary medicines. Physicians, instead of compounding their own, accepted those made by others with the exaggerated claims for them, used them on patients, transferring their own confidence in them to the patients, thus producing cures which, after a time, proved to be due entirely to the influence on the patient's mind. Pliny, the elder, complains that physicians of his time (the first century after Christ) often bought their remedies so as to avoid the trouble of preparation. He evidently refers to compounds supposed to be curative for various affections; for Friedlaender says that "often the physicians did not know the exact ingredients of the compounds that they used and should they desire to make up written prescriptions, would be cheated by the salesmen." Both Galen and Pliny complain that physicians used ready-made medicines, instead of original prescriptions carefully prepared by or under the supervision of the physicians themselves. It is evident that the proprietary remedy had come into existence thus early, and that various drug manufacturers made specialties which physicians, following the line of least resistance, found it easy to prescribe, though men like Pliny and Galen realized that this was an abdication of one of the most important functions of their profession, which was bound to work harm in the end both to themselves and to their patients.